Marie Kastrup, the Head of the Bicycle Programme in the City of Copenhagen, kicked off the “Shopping by Bike” session. In her presentation she told the story about Norrebrogade which is now one of the busiest cycling corridors in the world. A few years ago the City of Copenhagen decided to try out a pilot project in this very busy shopping street by taking away two car lanes and widening the cycle paths. The end results has been very successful: Norrebrogade now accommodates 48.500 cyclists per day in 2016. Although this was not the first time in history that  this street has seen large volumes of cyclists on its road surface. In 1949, during the oil crisis, no less than 60.000 people were cycling on that street. Unfortunately with the boom in car sales in the late seventies, the number of cyclists had dropped dramatically: only 8.000 people were cycling at that time because the road had been completely taken over by cars. Fortunately the City of Copenhagen has been able to turn the tide and rebalance their street space. They have again transformed Norrebrogade into a vibrant urban area were people love to hang out and do their shopping.

The second speaker, Joao Lacerda, has been responsible for the campaign "Bicycle is good for business" (Bicicleta faz bem ao Comércio) at the São Paulo cycling advocacy group Ciclocidade. He presented some of his research results about the impact of new investments in cycling infrastructure in the City of Sao Paolo. One of the main challenges to introduce bicycle infrastructure in shopping streets are the false perceptions of the owners of the businesses in the street. They are convinced that the majority of their customers come by car. A study showed that business owners believe that 46% of their customers have come by car to their shop, while in reality this figure is much lower. They were not to be convinced by best practices in other countries “San Fransisco or Copenhagen are not Sao Paolo, things are very different here”. Thanks to another study about the impact of bicycle infrastructure, Ciclocidade were able to demonstrate that 66% of shop owners have increased sales after the bike lane was installed.

Another study about the impact of Cycle logistics in the city of Rio de Janeiro has measures that 2.349 of deliveries are being delivered by cargo bikes every day! In fact, 16% of delivery stores use bicycles for their deliveries.